


too hot for the bees

by allapplesfall



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Banter, Dehydration, Desert, F/F, Fluff, Heat Stroke, Hurt/Comfort, my love language is physical touch and its. painfully obvious., they're SOFT but also snarky bc they're them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24584104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allapplesfall/pseuds/allapplesfall
Summary: Charlie, Sara, and Zari stumble through the desert. Zari gets heat exhaustion. Sara gets heat stroke. Charlie doesnotturn into a camel.
Relationships: Charlie/Sara Lance, Charlie/Sara Lance/Zari Tomaz | Zari Tarazi, Charlie/Zari Tomaz | Zari Tarazi, Sara Lance/Zari Tomaz | Zari Tarazi
Comments: 7
Kudos: 49





	1. she/her charlie

**Author's Note:**

> okay folks, a couple things! 
> 
> chapter 1 of this fic uses she/her pronouns for charlie, chapter 2 is the exact same fic except it uses they/them pronouns. i alternate wildly between the two when i think abt charlie and i have reasons i like both (my #1 reason being that i think charlie would love changing pronouns regularly to stick it to the concept of gender). ik if u have a set pronoun preference for a chara reading differently can feel like misgendering! so its a choose ur own adventure <3
> 
> this takes place in an au post s5 where charlie stays with the legends and so does zari tomaz, established charlie/zari/sara
> 
> tw for fever, dehydration, brief vomiting
> 
> title from ice cream by mika!

This bloody fucking desert.

Charlie steps over a limp bit of scrub grass, the sun searing down from overhead. Her shadow, a meager oval beneath her, warns that dusk isn’t coming as quickly as they’d hoped. In the distance, hills loom, hulking chunks of rock the color of burnt scrambled egg. Hot, cracked ground spreads in all directions.

She’s lived in deserts before—the sprawling sands of Egypt, the dry savanna of the Kalahari, the golden dunes of Lemnos—and she knows they can be beautiful. Knows they can be rich and thick with life, or gloriously free of human touch. At night, the stars gleam in the pooling darkness above. During the day, the hazy mirages ripple, vivid and dizzying.

But she never had to stomp through any of _those_ at midday, held in check by the awful mortal need to stay hydrated, without so much as a parasol. About half an hour ago, a pebble joined the small collection of sand in one of her ill-fitting stolen boots. Now each step burns _and_ jabs.

This bloody fucking desert.

“Can I have some more water?” Zari asks. She’s kept quiet, for the most part, after Sara’s warning that opening her mouth would suck her dry of precious fluids. Now her voice sounds worryingly raspy.

Charlie nods. Both she and Sara pull up short, turning to face her. Charlie reaches back in her rucksack and pulls out a large canteen—their only water supply not stolen in the double-cross ambush. She holds it out, the metal lukewarm beneath her fingers.

Taking it, Zari nods her thanks. She’s gone a sort of chalky color, under the shade of her flipped up jumper. Sweat runs in streams down the creases of her face. Carefully, she tips the bottle up. Her throat moves in three short swallows: her three allotted sips for the hour. She takes a moment to breathe, eyes shut. Then she wipes a hand over her mouth and offers the bottle back to Charlie.

“You alright, Z?” Charlie asks. She doesn’t take the bottle.

Zari nods. She sways slightly.

“Hey,” says Sara, stepping forward. “Talk to us.”

“Thought you said not to talk,” Zari mumbles.

“This is gonna be the one time you listen to me?” Charlie can tell by the carefully controlled edge in Sara’s voice that she’s concerned.

“Don’t worry.” Zari tries to wave her hand lazily. “It’s just the heat. It sucks.”

“That heat can kill you,” Sara replies, dead serious. She has her jacket folded around her head in the same way Zari does, but the fabric doesn’t hide her steady, piercing gaze. “How do you feel?”

“A bit dizzy. Head hurts.”

“Don’t love the sound of that,” Charlie says.

Sara reaches for her arm, pausing before touching for Zari’s chin dip of consent. More gently than Charlie would’ve expected, she rolls up the cuff of her sleeve. The exposed skin of Zari’s arm breaks into goosebumps. Sara lays two fingers on the inside of Zari’s wrist.

“Heat exhaustion,” she determines. “You should’ve told us you weren’t feeling good.”

“Sorry,” grouches Zari, not sounding very sorry at all.

“Take my sips of water,” Charlie offers. “I don’t need ‘em as bad as you lot.”

“Right,” Zari agrees. “I guess you could turn in to like a camel or something.”

Sara frowns, pale forehead creasing. She looks at Charlie. “Yeah, why aren’t you a camel?”

“Oi, you can’t just ask someone why they’re not a camel.”

Sara raises her eyebrows, unimpressed.

Charlie shifts. The heat beneath her feet has started to chew through the rubber soles of her boots. “Look,” she says. “Whatever John did to me, it’s still made shifting harder. The farther from this form I get, the more effort it takes to sustain. You lot are all all close together, really, so it’s not as much of fuss to skip from one fleshy biped to the next. Camels…” Charlie winces. “They’ve got humps. All power to ‘em, but that’d tire me out no end.”

“Got it,” says Sara. “Ix-nay the amel-cay.”

Zari takes three more sips of water, slow and measured. Charlie can’t help watch her lips, even chapped and cracking. She makes herself glance away from the extended curve of her neck. This time, when she hands the canteen back, Charlie takes it.

“Can’t we sit for a minute?” Zari asks. Her tone comes out almost childishly small. Charlie wants to say yes, obviously, anything you need, but Sara has other ideas.

“Sorry, Z,” she says. “We can’t stay exposed like this. We misjudged the time; it’s barely noon. If we’re out here in the hottest point of the day, we’ll be baked. And not B’s kind of baked.” She gestures out to the horizon. “Those mountains have shade. If we keep walking, we can probably make it in an hour, maybe two. Then we can rest for as long as you need.”

All of them look out towards the hills. Charlie blinks to try and clear whatever dust has collected on her eye. When nothing changes, she realizes the air itself is blurring, warped and fitful with heat. It feels like a lot of ground to cover. Especially when it’s this blazing.

“Two hours?” Zari’s voice cracks. She shakes her head. “You guys should go. I’ll stay here. You can…come back n’ get me.”

She tries to sit. Sara catches her under the arms and pulls her up. “No, Z. The ground is way hotter than up here.”

“I’ll carry you,” Charlie says. She takes off her rucksack and hands it to Sara, then crouches in front of Zari. “C’mon, love. Up you get.” 

“Seriously?”

“Do it.” Sara’s tone brooks no arguments. “We’re not gonna let you die out here.”

“Die? Always so dramatic…”

Charlie and Sara exchange looks. _They_ know they’re not being dramatic.

This bloody fucking desert.

Zari climbs onto Charlie’s back without further snark, which clues Charlie into just how shit she must be feeling. She fits her legs above Charlie’s hips and wraps her arms around her neck. At the little bit of skin contact they have—her hands, clasped clumsily near Charlie’s collarbone—she feels cool, clammy, and sweat-soaked. Shallow, warm puffs of breath tickle Charlie’s ear. While Zari doesn’t feel as heavy as expected, she still drags like a sandbag against Charlie’s aching shoulders.

Charlie hooks her arms under her legs, bouncing slightly to position her better. “You alright, Z?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“’Course. It’s us; we’ve got you.”

Sara nods her agreement. Her eyes stay on Zari, chin puckered in concern.

“’M fine, Sara,” Zari mumbles. “Seriously.”

“Sure,” says Sara. She grips Zari’s foot in a quick, comforting gesture and looks again to Charlie, who nods. “Let’s keep moving.”

After about forty-five minutes, something under Charlie’s feet crunches. She stumbles. Sara reaches out to steady her.

“Oh,” Zari says, her weight shifting as she peers down. “Gross.”

Charlie looks for herself and sees a smattering of bones, sun-bleached and cracked. She’d stepped on the pelvis.

“Probably a coyote,” Sara says. “Maybe a mountain lion.”

“Poor sod.” Charlie steps away. “Didn’t deserve what he got.”

For a brief moment, they all stare down at the bones. They almost blend into the pale, desiccated ground.

“You doing okay?”

Charlie almost says, “Yeah, fine,” before she even takes stock of herself. But as she considers the question, she registers just how much her back aches. She feels like her legs are walking on without her, like she never stopped, even at a standstill. The pebble in her shoe has ground a blister against the ball of her foot. Heat burns down from above, tightening and soaking the skin at the forehead and back of her neck.

Sara nods at Charlie’s non-answer. “Want me to take her for a bit?”

“Guys, I’m probably fine now,” Zari says. “I can walk.”

“Your headache gone?”

Zari’s fingers fiddle against Charlie’s chest. “Mostly.”

“Z.”

“No,” Zari admits. “It still sucks.”

“I’ll take her,” Sara repeats, a statement this time instead of a question. Charlie can’t find it in her to argue.

Clumsily, she lets Zari down, their skin unsticking like hot thighs off a bus seat. Sara hoists her onto her back in a way that makes it look easy. Charlie gives herself a moment to appreciate the muscles rippling beneath Sara’s formerly white longsleeve, now gone creamy with dust, before looking up to check on Zari. Sweat mats the glossy dark hair at her temples, but her eyes glint with awareness beneath her long lashes. Her lips twist in an exhausted amusement.

“I’m not dying,” she says. “Stop worrying.”

“I won’t,” Charlie replies, obstinate. “Not ‘till we’re nice and chilly on the Waverider.” 

“With Gideon’s nice AC,” Sara agrees.

They start walking again. For the first few minutes, Charlie feels like she’s floating, the light rucksack practically weightless after Zari’s deadweight. Slowly, gravity seeps back in. She starts dragging one foot in front of the other, painfully aware that each step only inches her closer to their goal. The sun brightens, somehow, like a giant hand moved a magnifying glass beneath it. Heat presses her head down.

About half an hour later, she takes Zari from Sara again.

They keep moving.

Finally, she looks up and the hills have gotten noticeably bigger. She can see each withered, prickly bush, each scraped outcropping of rock.

“Aw, yeah,” she says, managing a grin as she adjusts Zari on her back. “Look at that! We’ll be there in twenty minutes, tops.”

“Sweet,” Zari murmurs, evidently relieved.

When Sara says nothing, Charlie turns to her. “C’mon, Sara! This is good!”

Sara doesn’t seem to hear her. She doggedly troops on.

“Oi, boss, you alright?”

“Mm?” She glances up, eyes glazed. “Oh, yeah, fine. Totally.”

Something hard drops into the bottom of Charlie’s stomach. Ten minutes ago, Sara’s face, shadowed beneath her makeshift headwrap, had been slick with sweat. Now it’s red—flushed, sunburnt, or both—and dry. The determined set of her mouth can’t hide the chapped, bloody cracks on her bottom lip. She can’t quite seem to focus on them.

“You don’t look fine,” Zari says. Worry crosscuts her usual bluntness.

“Drink water,” Charlie urges. She takes a step closer, reaches for the rucksack drooping from Sara’s shoulders.

“I’m fine,” Sara says again. “We just…we just gotta keep moving.”

Charlie frowns. Sara always puts too much bluster into fibs, and her tone now is smeared with half-hearted bravado. Her eyes don’t hold Charlie’s. Her words slant into each other like falling dominoes. Zari’s hands tighten around Charlie’s neck, equally concerned.

“No,” Charlie says, unzipping the bag and pulling out the canteen, “you’re not. You’re gonna drink some water if I have to pour it down your throat.”

Sara frowns. “Is Zari okay?”

“I’m fine, Sara,” Zari says. “The water is for you.”

“No, we–we need to keep walking.”

Why does Charlie have to fall for the most stubborn bastards on the planet?

“And we _will_. After you drink some water.” Charlie twists off the warm metal cap and holds out the bottle. When Sara makes no move to take it, Charlie steps in and lifts the opening to Sara’s lips. She takes a few automatic sips before shaking her head, sending clear lines of water dribbling down her chin. Charlie pulls the bottle back.

“This is….not good,” Zari mutters in her ear.

“Can I touch you?” Charlie asks, which normally she doesn’t have to with Sara. In her heat-muddled state, though, Charlie doesn’t want to take any chances.

“I’m fine,” Sara argues weakly, which isn’t a no.

Charlie reaches out and presses a hand to her forehead. She herself has been out in this fucking desert so long she can’t completely trust her temperature judgment, but compared to Zari, Sara’s skin feels like hot tarmac.

“Bollocks. Z, she’s really hot.”

“Knew that,” Sara croaks, the corner of her mouth tipping up.

“So not the time,” Zari says. She pats Charlie’s shoulder. “Let me down. She’s worse than me. I can make it twenty minutes.”

Charlie doesn’t want to, hates the idea of both of them at risk, but there’s no way Sara should be walking out like this. Bending her knees, she lets Zari drop off her back. When she stumbles, legs wobbly after so long riding piggyback, Charlie reaches out to steady her. Zari catches her fingers and squeezes.

_It’ll be okay_ , her eyes say.

Charlie nods, firming her eyebrows back into a mask of unbothered toughness. “Alright, boss,” she says. “Your turn. Up you get.”

After a pause, Sara gives in. She drops the rucksack and clumsily clambers onto Charlie’s back. “I like riding you the other way better.”

Charlie manages a grin. “I’m sure you do.”

Zari mimes gagging, as if she’s not just as included in the other two’s nighttime fun.

Charlie straightens. Sara’s feverish heat presses against her spine, worrying her more than she’ll let her tone betray. When Sara rests her head on Charlie’s shoulder, hot cheek sagging against the thin fabric of her top, Charlie swallows a lick of fear and starts walking.

They make it to the foot of the hills in fifteen minutes, spurred on by redoubled conviction.

“There looks good,” pants Zari, ashen with exhaustion. She points to a small ledge, shaded by an abrupt drop in the hill-face and surrounding scrub bushes. “The sun…the way the sun is going, I don’t think it’ll get sunnier later.”

“Brilliant, Z,” Charlie says. She follows her up the darker, looser ground of the slope, hiking Sara higher up on her back as she goes.

“We made it?” Sara asks, lifting her head slightly.

“Nearly, mate. Hang in there.”

They pick their way over the uneven incline, increasing pace like sprinters at the end of a marathon.

“Charlie,” Sara says abruptly. “Put me down.”

“Not yet. We’re almost there, promise.”

“Put me down,” Sara says again, voice stronger than it’s been since they noticed something was off with her.

Zari looks up and seems to see something in her face that Charlie can’t. “Put her down, _now_.”

Smoothly, in one motion, Charlie does. Sara staggers back from her, facing away and down the side of the hill. She drops to her knees. Before they can catch her, she retches, bringing back up the little water she drank and what looks like oatmeal.

Charlie winces.

“Oof,” Zari murmurs, wrinkling her nose. Clumsily, she lays a hand on Sara’s shoulder.

“Ugh,” Sara groans. She wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, it’s alright.” Charlie puts more don’t-matter-none spirit into her words than she feels. “Your food just got a bit lonely down there, that’s all.”

“Gross,” Sara and Zari chorus, turning their heads to look at her with matching disgust.

She smirks, sympathetic and lopsided. “You think any more will be joining us?”

Sara puts a hand to her stomach. “Mm… Not right now, at least.”

“Let’s keep moving,” Zari says. “Sooner we get out of this sun, the happier _I’ll_ be.”

Concern for Zari motivates Sara more than any concern for herself could, so she nods, letting the two of them help her to her feet without argument. Slowly, they bridge the ten meters between themselves and their ledge.

The moment the shade hits them, the temperature drops by at least ten degrees C. Charlie lets out a sigh of relief. She helps lower Sara to the ground. “Now this is what I’m talking about,” she says.

Zari collapses beside her, curling up on the dusty rock like it’s her queen bed on the Waverider. She tugs off her head-jumper. Now that she isn’t trying to be tough, Charlie can see how shit she still feels.

Sara starts to shiver. It can’t be less than 30 degrees.

“Shit,” says Charlie, because here are two of her favorite people very much in need of a nurse—or better yet, Gideon—but all they have is her. And she’s not the nursing type, not by a longshot.

This bloody. Fucking. Desert.

“You got the water, Z?” she asks.

Zari grunts an affirmative.

Reaching over her, Charlie pulls out the bottle. Only five or six centimeters of water slosh around the bottom. She crouches and takes two sips for herself—one, to get rid of the dry, terrible taste in her mouth, and the second to fight back the grainy beginnings of a headache. Then she pushes it onto Zari. “Cheers,” she jokes.

Zari pushes herself up onto her elbow. She drinks a couple sips herself, then caps it. “I feel like crap.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Charlie rubs her back. “We’re gonna get out of this, yeah?”

“Right.” Zari drags the word out, slightly skeptical. She tilts her head to look for Sara. “If I feel this bad, how do you feel?”

Sara shivers.

Charlie shifts to get closer to her. “Oi, Sara,” she says. “Hey.”

“Mm?” She looks up at Charlie, her face so flushed she can barely make out her freckles, her eyes glassy.

Charlie presses her hand to Sara’s forehead again. “Not a fan of this fever, Z.”

“I know.” Zari chews on her lip. “Maybe take layers off?”

“Good one.” Charlie nods. She goes for Sara’s head-wrap first, untying the knot and shucking the jacket. Once off, she reaches for the bottom of Sara’s top.

“On a mission?” Sara asks, voice just south of lucid.

“You wish.” Charlie arranges Sara’s arms so they lie above her head and pulls off the shirt, revealing the glow-in-the-dark pale skin underneath. Then she slips her hand under the elastic at her waist—a practiced motion, in different circumstances—and pulls down her loose olive pants around her ankles. Left in a worn, greyish sports bra, black boyshorts, and boots, Sara continues to shiver.

“Charlie…” she moans.

“I know, I know. But we can’t have you staying this hot. You need to cool down.”

“Here’s the water,” Zari says, holding it out. She can’t seem to move herself closer, so Charlie shuffles back on her knees over to her and grabs it from her outstretched hand.

“Have a sip,” she encourages Sara.

Sara turns her mouth away.

“Remember two hours ago, when you told me I should’ve told you guys I wasn’t feeling well?” Zari asks. “You should follow your own damn advice.”

“Hey,” says Charlie, with a look that says, _come on_. “You’re both self-destructive bastards, alright? There’s room for both of you in this desert.”

“We’re _your_ self-destructive bastards,” Zari grumbles.

Charlie smiles, small, mostly because she knows Zari gets pricklier the more scared she gets. “Yeah. My self-destructive bastards. D’you think I should wet her clothes as a compress?”

“Yeah. Don’t use all the water, though.”

Carefully tipping water on each of the sleeves of Sara’s top, she waves them around in the air to cool them. Then she wipes Sara’s face with one and drapes the other around the back of her neck.

Sara stiffens. Her hand lifts protectively. “Cold.”

“You’re not, you’ve got a fever. And it’s too high, so we’ve gotta cool you down, alright?” _Before your brain cooks inside your own skin_ , Charlie doesn’t add. Unbidden, the memory of the coyote skeleton blinks into her mind. Fear sucks on her throat. She dampens Sara’s pant leg and starts patting down the muscled angles of the rest of her body, keeping her touch soft. “You’ve gotta let us take care of you.”

“Yeah,” Zari agrees.

Heat pools in the silence that follows.

“She’s gonna be okay, right?”

“Yeah,” Charlie says. “Yeah.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not. The Legends are probably looking for us by now. They’ll find us in time.” She arranges the wet rags on Sara’s skin. Putting some more water on her own borrowed headscarf, she scoots over to Zari. “Now you.”

“Next time you wanna give me a sponge bath, I’ll pass on the scenery.”

Charlie looks out through the bushes, getting an eyeful of the pale expanse of the valley floor and the blue sky bleached white with heat. She looks back to Zari, her brown skin soaked with sweat. “Got it.”

Gently, she traces the dips and planes of Zari’s face and exposed neck with the wet cloth. Zari trembles just once at the touch—a reflexive shiver, not like Sara’s feverish chills. She closes her eyes. Charlie can’t help but take it as a sign of trust; when they’d first started fucking around, Zari had to watch everything that was done to her body.

“Thanks,” Zari mumbles.

“’Course, Z. I’ve got ya.”

With Zari situated with a couple sips of water, she turns back to her other charge. She spots water on her face. _Hell yeah_ , she thinks. She’s started to sweat the fever out.

Once she gets closer, though, she realizes it isn’t sweat. Sara’s crying. Or, rather—tears leak out of her eyes, and she can’t stop them. It’s a spent, pained thing.

“Hey,” Charlie says. “None of that. You’re alright.”

Sara tries to curl closer into her, seeking the physical comfort Charlie had been surprised to learn Sara loves.

“We can’t,” she says, feeling like a scratched record. “I’m sorry, Sara. You need to stay cool.”

Peeling off the sleeve on her forehead, pressing the fabric to the open lid of the canteen and flipping it quickly upside down and right-side-up to wet it, she wipes down Sara’s face again, soaking up the tears. Sara takes a shallow, stuttering breath. She calms.

“I don’t like being like this,” Zari admits, watching. “Or seeing Sara this way. It’s just, like…she’s Sara.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agrees. Because fuck. This is Sara. This is Sara _and_ Zari, two of the toughest birds Charlie’s ever met, brought to this by forty-degree heat and a hike through their own slice of hell on earth. Brought to this by—you guessed it—this _bloody_ _fucking_ desert.

Some time passes. Ten minutes, or maybe half an hour. Sara stops crying but her fever won’t break. Zari reports feeling less dizzy but can’t sit up without getting lightheaded. Charlie nurtures a pounding headache of her own.

Finally, just when she’s about to ask Z if she has _any_ other ideas on how to get Sara’s temp down, she spots something.

Or two somethings, really: conjoined black dots, zigzagging through the sky. She squints at them, focusing on her eyes and shifting them into a hawk’s. Two figures, hand in hand. One has dark curly hair and a loud button-up and one has long hair and a more stylish, though equally loud, romper. A glowing red bracelet propels them through the sky. They crane their necks, searching for something on the desert floor.

Relief floods Charlie’s body. She grins impossibly wide.

“Behrad and Zari,” she says.

“Huh?” Zari asks, blinking her eyes open.

“B and Z2,” Charlie says again. “They’ve found us!”

“Took them long enough,” Zari says. Her grouching belies her brightening eyes and fading worry-lines.

“Mm?” Sara asks, shifting on the ground.

“They found us,” Charlie tells her. She drops a quick, enthusiastic peck to the too-hot top of Sara’s head. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

“Except they haven’t,” Zari points out, eyes sharpening. “They can’t see us from where we are.”

“Shit,” Charlie mutters. In a lithe motion, she jumps to her feet. “I’m gonna go flag ‘em down.”

“Charlie,” Zari calls. “Wait–”

But she doesn’t. Uncovered, she runs back into the full force of the blistering sun, dodging around the gritty brush and skidding on the sandy downhill. She reaches the flat and jogs out onto it, waving her hands above her head.

“Over here!” she calls. “Over here! Behrad! Zari! Over here!”

She stares up at the Tarazis’ airborne silhouettes. Neither of them spot her.

“Oi!” she yells.

They must think they’ve already scoped out this area. They’ve moved onto looking in the opposite direction.

_Fuck it,_ Charlie thinks. Screwing her eyes shut, she does the first thing that comes naturally. She feels her chest begin to heat. Her limbs start to swell. Her skin hardens into thick green plates, her neck lengthening. A thick tail sprouts from her lower back.

With a thundering roar, Charlie-as-Mithra shoots a column of flame into the sky.

-

Someone squeezes her hand. “Hey.”

Charlie fights to open her eyes. “Mm?”

“Hey, you.”

Finally, she manages to pry them open. Zari swims into focus, looking much better—moist lips, dry skin, alert eyes. _Wow_ , Charlie thinks. _I get to go to bed with that?_

Zari smiles like she knows what Charlie’s thinking. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

“Where…” Charlie angles her head forward, looks around. White lights, grey walls, cool AC. Intricately checkered panels interspersed with blue screens and shelves of ambiguous bottles. The med bay, on the Waverider. She smiles, leaning back. “They found us.”

“You turning into my childhood pet helped. Scales are a good look on you.” Zari’s lips crook, teasing. She hesitates. “Thank you. For, you know. All of it. You saved us.”

The _us_ brings the rest of Charlie’s hazy memory crystallizing in painful clarity. “Sara,” she says. “Is she?”

“Hey,” croaks a voice, from the bed to her other side. Charlie twists her neck to find Sara, salmon-pink but alive. “You can’t do a camel, but you can do a dragon?”

A pause, while Charlie processes. She grins. “I can’t stand you two.”

“Sure, you can,” Sara says. “Coulda let us die, but you didn’t.”

“High bar, you’ve got.”

“Yep,” she agrees, mock serious. Or maybe actually serious? Charlie can’t quite tell.

She struggles to sit up. “Why do I feel like I’ve been run over?”

“Mm,” Zari says. She still hasn’t let go of Charlie’s hand. “On last week’s episode, Charlie turned into a giant scaly lizard while seriously dehydrated and exhausted. She then immediately passed out.”

“Not as a big scaly lizard, though, right?”

“Nope. That would’ve been cooler.”

“Mm. She’s mad she didn’t to see you as a dragon.”

Sara pouts.

Charlie looks between them. “But we’re alright? All of us?”

“You all made it back in one piece,” a disembodied voice confirms. “Though I may recommend staying out of the sun for a few days. Shall I set a course for the UK, Captain?”

Charlie laughs. “Gideon, I’ve never been happier to hear your cheek.”

“Good to see you too, Charlie. May I be the second to say, _good job_.”

“Hey,” Sara defends. “I was getting to it!”

“Thanks, Gideon.” Charlie looks to Sara. “I’m waiting.”

Sara rolls her eyes, a smile tempting her lips. “Thank you for saving our lives. Love you.”

“Aw, yes you do.” Charlie grins. “Look at us! All together, not a tumbleweed in sight.”

“Thank god. I’m gonna be scrubbing sand out of my toes for the next week.”

Sara snorts. “And from…other places.”

“I’ll help with that one,” Charlie offers.

“Ooh,” says Sara.

“Ugh.” Zari bumps her side with their interlocked fingers.

Charlie beams at them. “Gideon? Can we move this party to Sara’s quarters yet?”

“You may,” Gideon says. “Though I do counsel actual sleep tonight.”

Sara sits up, wincing. She rubs a peeling piece of skin off the top of her shoulders. “Tragically, I think she has a point.”

Charlie doesn’t care. Right now, sliding under cool sheets and curling up with her girls sounds like the best thing since sliced bread. As Zari helps her stand, she grins mischievously. When she tucks her cold feet between their thighs, they’re gonna _squirm_.


	2. they/them charlie

This bloody fucking desert.

Charlie steps over a limp bit of scrub grass, the sun searing down from overhead. Their shadow, a meager oval beneath them, warns that dusk isn’t coming as quickly as they’d hoped. In the distance, hills loom, hulking chunks of rock the color of burnt scrambled egg. Hot, cracked ground spreads in all directions.

They’ve lived in deserts before—the sprawling sands of Egypt, the dry savanna of the Kalahari, the golden dunes of Lemnos—and they know they can be beautiful. Know they can be rich and thick with life, or gloriously free of human touch. At night, the stars gleam in the pooling darkness above. During the day, the hazy mirages ripple, vivid and dizzying.

But they never had to stomp through any of _those_ at midday, held in check by the awful mortal need to stay hydrated, without so much as a parasol. About half an hour ago, a pebble joined the small collection of sand in one of their ill-fitting stolen boots. Now each step burns _and_ jabs.

This bloody fucking desert.

“Can I have some more water?” Zari asks. She’s kept quiet, for the most part, after Sara’s warning that opening her mouth would suck her dry of precious fluids. Now her voice sounds worryingly raspy.

Charlie nods. Both they and Sara pull up short, turning to face her. Charlie reaches back in their rucksack and pulls out a large canteen—the only water supply not stolen in the double-cross ambush. They hold it out, the metal lukewarm beneath their fingers.

Taking it, Zari nods her thanks. She’s gone a sort of chalky color, under the shade of her flipped up jumper. Sweat runs in streams down the creases of her face. Carefully, she tips the bottle up. Her throat moves in three short swallows: her three allotted sips for the hour. She takes a moment to breathe, eyes shut. Then she wipes a hand over her mouth and offers the bottle back to Charlie.

“You alright, Z?” Charlie asks. They don’t take the bottle.

Zari nods. She sways slightly.

“Hey,” says Sara, stepping forward. “Talk to us.”

“Thought you said not to talk,” Zari mumbles.

“This is gonna be the one time you listen to me?” Charlie can tell by the carefully controlled edge in Sara’s voice that she’s concerned.

“Don’t worry.” Zari tries to wave her hand lazily. “It’s just the heat. It sucks.”

“That heat can kill you,” Sara replies, dead serious. She has her jacket folded around her head in the same way Zari does, but the fabric doesn’t hide her steady, piercing gaze. “How do you feel?”

“A bit dizzy. Head hurts.”

“Don’t love the sound of that,” Charlie says.

Sara reaches for her arm, pausing before touching for Zari’s chin dip of consent. More gently than Charlie would’ve expected, she rolls up the cuff of her sleeve. The exposed skin of Zari’s arm breaks into goosebumps. Sara lays two fingers on the inside of Zari’s wrist.

“Heat exhaustion,” she determines. “You should’ve told us you weren’t feeling good.”

“Sorry,” grouches Zari, not sounding very sorry at all.

“Take my sips of water,” Charlie offers. “I don’t need ‘em as bad as you lot.”

“Right,” Zari agrees. “I guess you could turn in to like a camel or something.”

Sara frowns, pale forehead creasing. She looks at Charlie. “Yeah, why aren’t you a camel?”

“Oi, you can’t just ask someone why they’re not a camel.”

Sara raises her eyebrows, unimpressed.

Charlie shifts. The heat beneath their feet has started to chew through the rubber soles of their boots. “Look,” they say. “Whatever John did to me, it’s still made shifting harder. The farther from this form I get, the more effort it takes to sustain. You lot are all all close together, really, so it’s not as much of fuss to skip from one fleshy biped to the next. Camels…” Charlie winces. “They’ve got humps. All power to ‘em, but that’d tire me out no end.”

“Got it,” says Sara. “Ix-nay the amel-cay.”

Zari takes three more sips of water, slow and measured. Charlie can’t help watch her lips, even chapped and cracking. They makes themself glance away from the extended curve of her neck. This time, when she hands the canteen back, Charlie takes it.

“Can’t we sit for a minute?” Zari asks. Her tone comes out almost childishly small. Charlie wants to say yes, obviously, anything you need, but Sara has other ideas.

“Sorry, Z,” she says. “We can’t stay exposed like this. We misjudged the time; it’s barely noon. If we’re out here in the hottest point of the day, we’ll be baked. And not B’s kind of baked.” She gestures out to the horizon. “Those mountains have shade. If we keep walking, we can probably make it in an hour, maybe two. Then we can rest for as long as you need.”

All of them look out towards the hills. Charlie blinks to try and clear whatever dust has collected on their eye. When nothing changes, they realize the air itself is blurring, warped and fitful with heat. It feels like a lot of ground to cover. Especially when it’s this blazing.

“Two hours?” Zari’s voice cracks. She shakes her head. “You guys should go. I’ll stay here. You can…come back n’ get me.”

She tries to sit. Sara catches her under the arms and pulls her up. “No, Z. The ground is way hotter than up here.”

“I’ll carry you,” Charlie says. They take off their rucksack and hand it to Sara, then crouch in front of Zari. “C’mon, love. Up you get.” 

“Seriously?”

“Do it.” Sara’s tone brooks no arguments. “We’re not gonna let you die out here.”

“Die? Always so dramatic…”

Charlie and Sara exchange looks. _They_ know they’re not being dramatic.

This bloody fucking desert.

Zari climbs onto Charlie’s back without further snark, which clues Charlie into just how shit she must be feeling. She fits her legs above Charlie’s hips and wraps her arms around their neck. At the little bit of skin contact they have—her hands, clasped clumsily near Charlie’s collarbone—she feels cool, clammy, and sweat-soaked. Shallow, warm puffs of breath tickle Charlie’s ear. While Zari doesn’t feel as heavy as expected, she still drags like a sandbag against Charlie’s aching shoulders.

Charlie hooks their arms under her legs, bouncing slightly to position her better. “You alright, Z?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“’Course. It’s us; we’ve got you.”

Sara nods her agreement. Her eyes stay on Zari, chin puckered in concern.

“’M fine, Sara,” Zari mumbles. “Seriously.”

“Sure,” says Sara. She grips Zari’s foot in a quick, comforting gesture and looks again to Charlie, who nods. “Let’s keep moving.”

After about forty-five minutes, something under Charlie’s feet crunches. They stumble. Sara reaches out to steady them.

“Oh,” Zari says, her weight shifting as she peers down. “Gross.”

Charlie looks for themself and sees a smattering of bones, sun-bleached and cracked. They’d stepped on the pelvis.

“Probably a coyote,” Sara says. “Maybe a mountain lion.”

“Poor sod.” Charile steps away. “Didn’t deserve what he got.”

For a brief moment, they all stare down at the bones. They almost blend into the pale, desiccated ground.

“You doing okay?”

Charlie almost says, “Yeah, fine,” before they even take stock of themself. But as they consider the question, they register just how much their back aches. They feel like their legs are walking on without them, like they never stopped, even at a standstill. The pebble in their shoe has ground a blister against the ball of their foot. Heat burns down from above, tightening and soaking the skin at the forehead and back of their neck.

Sara nods at Charlie’s non-answer. “Want me to take her for a bit?”

“Guys, I’m probably fine now,” Zari says. “I can walk.”

“Your headache gone?”

Zari’s fingers fiddle against Charlie’s chest. “Mostly."

“Z.”

“No,” Zari admits. “It still sucks.”

“I’ll take her,” Sara repeats, a statement this time instead of a question. Charlie can’t find it in them to argue.

Clumsily, they let Zari down, their skin unsticking like hot thighs off a bus seat. Sara hoists her onto her back in a way that makes it look easy. Charlie gives themself a moment to appreciate the muscles rippling beneath Sara’s formerly white longsleeve, now gone creamy with dust, before looking up to check on Zari. Sweat mats the glossy dark hair at her temples, but her eyes glint with awareness beneath her long lashes. Her lips twist in an exhausted amusement.

“I’m not dying,” she says. “Stop worrying.”

“I won’t,” Charlie replies, obstinate. “Not ‘till we’re nice and chilly on the Waverider.” 

“With Gideon’s nice AC,” Sara agrees.

They start walking again. For the first few minutes, Charlie feels like they’re floating, the light rucksack practically weightless after Zari’s deadweight. Slowly, gravity seeps back in. They start dragging one foot in front of the other, painfully aware that each step only inches them closer to their goal. The sun brightens, somehow, like a giant hand moved a magnifying glass beneath it. Heat presses their head down.

About half an hour later, they take Zari from Sara again.

They keep moving.

Finally, they look up and the hills have gotten noticeably bigger. They can see each withered, prickly bush, each scraped outcropping of rock.

“Aw, yeah,” they say, managing a grin as they adjust Zari on their back. “Look at that! We’ll be there in twenty minutes, tops.”

“Sweet,” Zari murmurs, evidently relieved.

When Sara says nothing, Charlie turns to her. “C’mon, Sara! This is good!”

Sara doesn’t seem to hear them. She doggedly troops on.

“Oi, boss, you alright?”

“Mm?” She glances up, eyes glazed. “Oh, yeah, fine. Totally.”

Something hard drops into the bottom of Charlie’s stomach. Ten minutes ago, Sara’s face, shadowed beneath her makeshift headwrap, had been slick with sweat. Now it’s red—flushed, sunburnt, or both—and dry. The determined set of her mouth can’t hide the chapped, bloody cracks on her bottom lip. She can’t quite seem to focus on them.

“You don’t look fine,” Zari says. Worry crosscuts her usual bluntness.

“Drink water,” Charlie urges. They take a step closer, reach for the rucksack drooping from Sara’s shoulders.

“I’m fine,” Sara says again. “We just…we just gotta keep moving.”

Charlie frowns. Sara always puts too much bluster into fibs, and her tone now is smeared with half-hearted bravado. Her eyes don’t hold Charlie’s. Her words slant into each other like falling dominoes. Zari’s hands tighten around Charlie’s neck, equally concerned.

“No,” Charlie says, unzipping the bag and pulling out the canteen, “you’re not. You’re gonna drink some water if I have to pour it down your throat.”

Sara frowns. “Is Zari okay?”

“I’m fine, Sara,” Zari says. “The water is for you.”

“No, we–we need to keep walking.”

Why does Charlie have to fall for the most stubborn bastards on the planet?

“And we _will_. After you drink some water.” Charlie twists off the warm metal cap and holds out the bottle. When Sara makes no move to take it, Charlie steps in and lifts the opening to Sara’s lips. She takes a few automatic sips before shaking her head, sending clear lines of water dribbling down her chin. Charlie pulls the bottle back.

“This is…not good,” Zari mutters in her ear.

“Can I touch you?” Charlie asks, which they normally don’t have to with Sara. In her heat-muddled state, though, Charlie doesn’t want to take any chances.

“I’m fine,” Sara argues weakly, which isn’t a no.

Charlie reaches out and presses a hand to her forehead. They’ve been out in this fucking desert so long they can’t completely trust their temperature judgment, but compared to Zari, Sara’s skin feels like hot tarmac.

“Bollocks. Z, she’s really hot."

“Knew that,” Sara croaks, the corner of her mouth tipping up.

“So not the time,” Zari says. She pats Charlie’s shoulder. “Let me down. She’s worse than me. I can make it twenty minutes.”

Charlie doesn’t want to, hates the idea of both of them at risk, but there’s no way Sara should be walking out like this. Bending their knees, they let Zari drop off their back. When she stumbles, legs wobbly after so long riding piggyback, Charlie reaches out to steady her. Zari catches their fingers and squeezes.

 _It’ll be okay_ , her eyes say.

Charlie nods, firming their eyebrows back into a mask of unbothered toughness. “Alright, boss,” she says. “Your turn. Up you get.”

After a pause, Sara gives in. She drops the rucksack and clumsily clambers onto Charlie’s back. “I like riding you the other way better.”

Charlie manages a grin. “I’m sure you do.”

Zari mimes gagging, as if she’s not just as included in the other two’s nighttime fun.

Charlie straightens. Sara’s feverish heat presses against their spine, worrying them more than they’ll let their tone betray. When Sara rests her head on Charlie’s shoulder, hot cheek sagging against the thin fabric of their top, Charlie swallows a lick of fear and starts walking.

They make it to the foot of the hills in fifteen minutes, spurred on by redoubled conviction.

“There looks good,” pants Zari, ashen with exhaustion. She points to a small ledge, shaded by an abrupt drop in the hill-face and surrounding scrub bushes. “The sun…the way the sun is going, I don’t think it’ll get sunnier later.”

“Brilliant, Z,” Charlie says. They follow her up the darker, looser ground of the slope, hiking Sara higher up on their back as they go.

“We made it?” Sara asks, lifting her head slightly.

“Nearly, mate. Hang in there.”

They pick their way over the uneven incline, increasing pace like sprinters at the end of a marathon.

“Charlie,” Sara says abruptly. “Put me down.”

“Not yet. We’re almost there, promise.”

“Put me down,” Sara says again, voice stronger than it’s been since they noticed something was off with her.

Zari looks up and seems to see something in her face that Charlie can’t. “Put her down, _now_."

Smoothly, in one motion, Charlie does. Sara staggers back from them, facing away and down the side of the hill. She drops to her knees. Before they can catch her, she retches, bringing back up the little water she drank and what looks like oatmeal.

Charlie winces.

“Oof,” Zari murmurs, wrinkling her nose. Clumsily, she lays a hand on Sara’s shoulder.

“Ugh,” Sara groans. She wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, it’s alright.” Charlie puts more don’t-matter-none spirit into their words than they feel. “Your food just got a bit lonely down there, that’s all.”

“Gross,” Sara and Zari chorus, turning their heads to look at them with matching disgust.

They smirk, sympathetic and lopsided. “You think any more will be joining us?”

Sara puts a hand to her stomach. “Mm… Not right now, at least.”

“Let’s keep moving,” Zari says. “Sooner we get out of this sun, the happier _I’ll_ be.”

Concern for Zari motivates Sara more than any concern for herself could, so she nods, letting the two of them help her to her feet without argument. Slowly, they bridge the ten meters between themselves and their ledge.

The moment the shade hits them, the temperature drops by at least ten degrees C. Charlie lets out a sigh of relief. They help lower Sara to the ground. “Now this is what I’m talking about,” they say.

Zari collapses beside her, curling up on the dusty rock like it’s her queen bed on the Waverider. She tugs off her head-jumper. Now that she isn’t trying to be tough, Charlie can see how shit she still feels.

Sara starts to shiver. It can’t be less than 30 degrees.

“Shit,” says Charlie, because here are two of their favorite people very much in need of a nurse—or better yet, Gideon—but all they have is them. And they’re not the nursing type, not by a longshot.

This bloody. Fucking. Desert.

“You got the water, Z?” they ask.

Zari grunts an affirmative.

Reaching over her, Charlie pulls out the bottle. Only five or six centimeters of water slosh around the bottom. They crouch and take two sips for themself—one, to get rid of the dry, terrible taste in their mouth, and the second to fight back the grainy beginnings of a headache. Then they push it onto Zari. “Cheers,” they joke.

Zari pushes herself up onto her elbow. She drinks a couple sips herself, then caps it. “I feel like crap.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Charlie rubs her back. “We’re gonna get out of this, yeah?”

“Right.” Zari drags the word out, slightly skeptical. She tilts her head to look for Sara. “If I feel this bad, how do you feel?”

Sara shivers.

Charlie shifts to get closer to her. “Oi, Sara,” they say. “Hey.”

“Mm?” She looks up at Charlie, her face so flushed they can barely make out her freckles, her eyes glassy.

Charlie presses their hand to Sara’s forehead again. “Not a fan of this fever, Z.”

“I know.” Zari chews on her lip. “Maybe take layers off?”

“Good one.” Charlie nods. They go for Sara’s head-wrap first, untying the knot and shucking the jacket. Once off, they reach for the bottom of Sara’s top.

“On a mission?” Sara asks, voice just south of lucid.

“You wish.” Charlie arranges Sara’s arms so they lie above her head and pulls off the shirt, revealing the glow-in-the-dark pale skin underneath. Then they slip their hand under the elastic at her waist—a practiced motion, in different circumstances—and pull down her loose olive pants around her ankles. Left in a worn, greyish sports bra, black boyshorts, and boots, Sara continues to shiver.

“Charlie…” she moans.

“I know, I know. But we can’t have you staying this hot. You need to cool down.”

“Here’s the water,” Zari says, holding it out. She can’t seem to move herself closer, so Charlie shuffles on their knees over to her and grabs it from her outstretched hand.

“Have a sip,” they encourage Sara.

Sara turns her mouth away.

“Remember two hours ago, when you told me I should’ve told you guys I wasn’t feeling well?” Zari asks. “You should follow your own damn advice.”

“Hey,” says Charlie, with a look that says, _come on_. “You’re both self-destructive bastards, alright? There’s room for both of you in this desert.”

“We’re _your_ self-destructive bastards,” Zari grumbles.

Charlie smiles, small, mostly because they know Zari gets pricklier the more scared she gets. “Yeah. My self-destructive bastards. D’you think I should wet her clothes as a compress?”

“Yeah. Don’t use all the water, though.”

Carefully tipping water on each of the sleeves of Sara’s top, they wave them around in the air to cool them. Then they wipe Sara’s face with one and drape the other around the back of her neck.

Sara stiffens. Her hand lifts protectively. “Cold.”

“You’re not, you’ve got a fever. And it’s too high, so we’ve gotta cool you down, alright?” _Before your brain cooks inside your own skin_ , Charlie doesn’t add. Unbidden, the memory of the coyote skeleton blinks into their mind. Fear sucks on their throat. They dampen Sara’s pant leg and start patting down the muscled angles of the rest of her body, keeping their touch soft. “You’ve gotta let us take care of you.”

“Yeah,” Zari agrees.

Heat pools in the silence that follows.

“She’s gonna be okay, right?”

“Yeah,” Charlie says. “Yeah.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not. The Legends are probably looking for us by now. They’ll find us in time.” They arrange the wet rags on Sara’s skin. Putting some more water on their headscarf, they scoots over to Zari. “Now you.”

“Next time you wanna give me a sponge bath, I’ll pass on the scenery.”

Charlie looks out through the bushes, getting an eyeful of the pale expanse of the valley floor and the blue sky bleached white with heat. They look back to Zari, whose brown skin is soaked with sweat. “Got it.”

Gently, they trace the dips and planes of Zari’s face and exposed neck with the wet cloth. Zari trembles just once at the touch—a reflexive shiver, not like Sara’s feverish chills. She closes her eyes. Charlie can’t help but take it as a sign of trust; when they’d first started fucking around, Zari had to watch everything that was done to her body.

“Thanks,” Zari mumbles.

“’Course, Z. I’ve got ya.”

With Zari situated with a couple sips of water, they turn back to their other charge. They spot water on her face. _Hell yeah_ , they think. _She’s started to sweat the fever out._

Once they get closer, though, they realize it isn’t sweat. Sara’s crying. Or, rather—tears leak out of her eyes, and she can’t stop them. It’s a spent, pained thing.

“Hey,” Charlie says. “None of that. You’re alright.”

Sara tries to curl closer into them, seeking the physical comfort Charlie had been surprised to learn Sara loves.

“We can’t,” they say, feeling like a scratched record. “I’m sorry, Sara. You need to stay cool.”

Peeling off the sleeve on her forehead, pressing the fabric to the open lid of the canteen and flipping it quickly upside down and right-side-up to wet it, they wipe down Sara’s face again, soaking up the tears. Sara takes a shallow, stuttering breath. She calms.

“I don’t like being like this,” Zari admits, watching. “Or seeing Sara this way. It’s just, like…she’s Sara.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agrees. Because fuck. This is Sara. This is Sara _and_ Zari, two of the toughest birds Charlie’s ever met, brought to this by forty-degree heat and a hike through their own slice of hell on earth. Brought to this by—you guessed it—this _bloody_ _fucking_ desert.

Some time passes. Ten minutes, or maybe half an hour. Sara stops crying but her fever won’t break. Zari reports feeling less dizzy but can’t sit up without getting lightheaded. Charlie nurtures a pounding headache of their own.

Finally, just when they’re about to ask Z if she has _any_ other ideas on how to get Sara’s temp down, they spot something.

Or two somethings, really: conjoined black dots, zigzagging through the sky. Charlie squints at them, focusing on their own eyes and shifting them into a hawk’s. Two figures, hand in hand. One has dark curly hair and a loud button-up and one has long hair and a more stylish, though equally loud, romper. A glowing red bracelet propels them through the sky. The two crane their necks, searching for something on the desert floor.

Relief floods Charlie’s body. They grin impossibly wide.

“Behrad and Zari,” they say.

“Huh?” Zari asks, blinking her eyes open.

“B and Z2,” Charlie says again. “They’ve found us!”

“Took them long enough,” Zari says. Her grouching belies her brightening eyes and fading worry-lines.

“Mm?” Sara asks, shifting on the ground.

“They found us,” Charlie tells her. They drop a quick, enthusiastic peck to the too-hot top of Sara’s head. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

“Except they haven’t,” Zari points out, eyes sharpening. “They can’t see us from where we are.”

“Shit,” Charlie mutters. In a lithe motion, they jump to their feet. “I’m gonna go flag ‘em down.”

“Charlie,” Zari calls. “Wait–”

But they don’t. Uncovered, they run back into the full force of the blistering sun, dodging around the gritty brush and skidding on the sandy downhill. They reach the flat and jog out onto it, waving their hands above their head.

“Over here!” they call. “Over here! Behrad! Zari! Over here!”

They stare up at the Tarazis’ airborne silhouettes. Neither of them spot Charlie.

“Oi!” they yell.

They must think they’ve already scoped out this area. They’ve moved onto looking in the opposite direction.

 _Fuck it,_ Charlie thinks. Screwing their eyes shut, they do the first thing that comes naturally. They feel their chest begin to heat. Their limbs start to swell. Their skin hardens into thick green plates, their neck lengthening. A thick tail sprouts from their lower back.

With a thundering roar, Charlie-as-Mithra shoots a column of flame into the sky.

-

Someone squeezes their hand. “Hey.”

Charlie fights to open their eyes. “Mm?”

“Hey, you.”

Finally, they manages to pry them open. Zari swims into focus, looking much better—moist lips, dry skin, alert eyes. _Wow_ , Charlie thinks. _I get to go to bed with that?_

Zari smiles like she knows what Charlie’s thinking. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

“Where…” Charlie angles their head forward, looks around. White lights, grey walls, cool AC. Intricately checkered panels interspersed with blue screens and shelves of ambiguous bottles. The med bay, on the Waverider. They smile, leaning back. “They found us.”

“You turning into my childhood pet helped. Scales are a good look on you.” Zari’s lips crook, teasing. She hesitates. “Thank you. For, you know. All of it. You saved us.”

The _us_ brings the rest of Charlie’s hazy memory crystallizing in painful clarity. “Sara,” they say. “Is she?”

“Hey,” croaks a voice, from the bed to their other side. Charlie twists their neck to find Sara, salmon-pink but alive. “You can’t do a camel, but you can do a dragon?”

A pause, while Charlie processes. They grin. “I can’t stand you two.”

“Sure, you can,” Sara says. “Coulda let us die, but you didn’t.”

“High bar, you’ve got.”

“Yep,” she agrees, mock serious. Or maybe actually serious? Charlie can’t quite tell.

They struggle to sit up. “Why do I feel like I’ve been run over?”

“Mm,” Zari says. She still hasn’t let go of Charlie’s hand. “On last week’s episode, Charlie turned into a giant scaly lizard while seriously dehydrated and exhausted. They then immediately passed out.”

“Not as a big scaly lizard, though, right?”

“Nope. That would’ve been cooler.”

“Mm. She’s mad she didn’t to see you as a dragon.”

Sara pouts.

Charlie looks between them. “But we’re alright? All of us?”

“You all made it back in one piece,” a disembodied voice confirms. “Though I may recommend staying out of the sun for a few days. Shall I set a course for the United Kingdom, Captain?”

Charlie laughs. “Gideon, I’ve never been happier to hear your cheek.”

“Good to see you too, Charlie. May I be the second to say, _good job_.”

“Hey,” Sara defends. “I was getting to it!”

“Thanks, Gideon.” Charlie looks to Sara. “I’m waiting.”

Sara rolls her eyes, a smile tempting her lips. “Thank you for saving our lives. Love you.”

“Aw, yes you do.” Charlie grins. “Look at us! All together, not a tumbleweed in sight.”

“Thank god. I’m gonna be scrubbing sand out of my toes for the next week.”

Sara snorts. “And from…other places.”

“I’ll help with that one,” Charlie offers.

“Ooh,” says Sara.

“Ugh.” Zari bumps their side with their interlocked fingers.

Charlie beams at the two of them. “Gideon? Can we move this party to Sara’s quarters yet?”

“Feel free,” Gideon says. “Though I do counsel actual sleep tonight.”

Sara sits up, wincing. She rubs a peeling piece of skin off the top of her shoulders. “Tragically, I think she has a point.”

Charlie doesn’t care. Right now, sliding under cool sheets and curling up with their girls sounds like the best thing since sliced bread. As Zari helps them stand, they grin mischievously. When they tuck their cold feet between their thighs, Sara and Zari are gonna _squirm_.

**Author's Note:**

> i have like 50 fluffier things i'm working on but i work on a farm and the past two days i've had the afternoons off because it's been so fucking hot so this happened! lmk what u think <3


End file.
